Our nginx caching proxy setup for Evergreen

Posted on Thu 24 August 2017 in Libraries • Tagged with evergreen, coding, libraries

Details of our nginx caching proxy settings for Evergreen
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Enriching catalogue pages in Evergreen with Wikidata

Posted on Sat 12 August 2017 in Linked Open Data • Tagged with evergreen, coding, libraries, structured data

An openly licensed JavaScript widget that enriches library catalogues with Wikidata data
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Wikidata, Canada 150, and music festival data

Posted on Fri 02 June 2017 in Linked Open Data • Tagged with coding, libraries, structured data

At CAML 2017, Stacy Allison-Cassin and I presented our arguments in favour of using Wikidata is a good fit for communities who want to increase the visibility of Canadian music in Wikimedia Foundation projects.
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Wikidata workshop for librarians

Posted on Sun 28 May 2017 in Linked Open Data • Tagged with coding, libraries, structured data

Interested in learning about Wikidata? I delivered a workshop for librarians and archivists at the CAML 2017 preconference. Perhaps you will find the materials I developed useful for your own training purposes.
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Truly progressive WebVR apps are available offline!

Posted on Sun 19 February 2017 in Virtual Reality • Tagged with coding, libraries, progressive web apps, webvr

I've been dabbling with the A-Frame framework for creating WebVR experiences for the past couple of months, ever since Patrick Trottier gave a lightning talk at the GDG Sudbury DevFest in November and a hands-on session with AFrame in January. The @AFrameVR Twitter feed regularly highlights cool new WebVR apps …


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schema.org, Wikidata, Knowledge Graph: strands of the modern semantic web

Posted on Sun 12 February 2017 in Linked Open Data • Tagged with coding, libraries, structured data

My slides from Ohio DevFest 2016: schema.org, Wikidata, Knowledge Graph: strands of the modern semantic web

And the video, recorded and edited by the incredible amazing Patrick Hammond:

In November, I had the opportunity to speak at Ohio DevFest 2016. One of the organizers, Casey Borders, had invited me …


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Google Scholar's broken Recaptcha hurts libraries and their users

Posted on Fri 02 September 2016 in Libraries • Tagged with coding

Update 2016-11-28: The brilliant folk at UNC figured out how to fix Google Scholar using a pre-scoped search so that, if a search is launched from the library web site, it will automatically associate that search with the library's licensed resources. No EZProxy required!


Screenshot of a broken RECAPTCHA preventing Google Scholar from working

For libraries, proxying user requests is …


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PHP's File_MARC gets a new release (1.1.3)

Posted on Thu 01 September 2016 in Libraries • Tagged with Coding, PHP, coding, php

Yesterday, just one day before the anniversary of the 1.1.2 release, I published the 1.1.3 release of the PEAR File_MARC library. The only change is the addition of a convenience method for fields called getContents() that simply concatenates all of the subfields together in order …


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PHP's File_MARC gets a new release (1.1.3)

Posted on Thu 01 September 2016 in Libraries • Tagged with Coding, PHP, coding, php

Yesterday, just one day before the anniversary of the 1.1.2 release, I published the 1.1.3 release of the PEAR File_MARC library. The only change is the addition of a convenience method for fields called getContents() that simply concatenates all of the subfields together in order …


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Chromebooks and privacy: not always at odds

Posted on Sat 11 June 2016 in misc • Tagged with Coding, coding

On Friday, June 10th I gave a short talk at the OLITA Digital Odyssey 2016 conference, which had a theme this year of privacy and security. My talk addressed the evolution of our public and loaner laptops over the past decade, from bare Windows XP, to Linux, Windows XP with …


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